Issue 14

Overview

Issue 14, titled Architect, is the most recent major revision to City of Heroes and City of Villains, released on Wednesday, April 8, 2009. The title refers to the Mission Architect, which was originally slated to be a part of Issue 13.

This article summarizes some of the major features in Issue 14. For more complete details, see the release date's patch notes.

Confirmed

Mission Architect

Main Article: Mission Architect

First the City of Heroes Character Creator set a new standard for player creation and customization. Now, Issue 14 takes another giant step, allowing players to design their own missions and story arcs to share with the entire City of Heroes community. Using an intuitive interface similar to the game's detailed Character Creator, players can create missions from the ground up. Players will determine details ranging from environments, mission objectives, and enemies, to written fiction and character dialogue; giving their stories nearly infinite depth and personalization.

Among other rewards, authors and architects who create the most extraordinary content will garner acclaim and reputation. Community feedback will be paramount and some missions will elevate in status unlocking new rewards and benefits for their creators.

Costumes

• A Valkyrie option has been added for Dual Blades.
• Buttcapes (officially called Waist Capes) are available to female Widows.

Arena

• Swiss Draw: An 8 to 64 player tournament that will have players duking it out 1 vs 1 until the top 8 combatants are chosen. After this point there will be three rounds of single elimination to determine the winner of the tournament.
• Pre-Match Buffing Period: Upon entering an arena map a "Waiting for Players" period will begin. It will wait until all players are on the map or until 1 minute has passed, whatever happens first. After this there is a brief "Buff Players" phase which allows players to turn on their toggles and buff themselves and their teammates. During this phase all players can only affect and be affected by their allies.
• Improved Respawn: Arena matches now have a 15 second global respawn timer. When that timer is up, all defeated players respawn at the same time. After respawning players will be phased out and can only affect and be affected by friendly players, just like during the Buff Players period. In addition to this all teams have a static spawn location. This means that each time a team member is defeated they will respawn at the same location.
• New victory conditions: Individual Kills, where a player must earn a certain number of kills to win the match, and Individual Lives, where each player has a set number of lives that must be depleted to end the match.
• Villain Pentad and Hero/Villain Septad: Similar to heroes, villains can now opt to form teams consisting of one of each core archtype, and both factions can form teams of one of each core and one of each Epic archetype.

SG & Bases

• Storage containers now have rank based permissions for each storage container. So each container can be set so specific ranks can add or remove items from that storage container.
• Super Leader: A new position above the original Leader rank, Super Leaders can promote or demote any player in the Supergroup, including themselves. With the new position, Leader rank players will not be auto-demoted due to inactivity. This is reserved only for Super Leaders, who will be demoted back to Leader rank and the most recent Leader promoted in their place. There can be only one Super Leader.

PvP Changes

• PvP Invention Sets have been added. These sets have a chance to drop only by defeating other players, either in PvP zones or in the arena. They have two different bonuses, a PvE bonus and a PvP bonus. In PvE zones, only the PvE bonus will affect the player. In PvP zones or the Arena, both bonuses will be in effect.
  • Fury of the Gladiator (Melee AoE Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Javelin Volley (Ranged AoE Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Gladiator's Armor (Resistance Buff Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Gladiator's Javelin (Ranged Damage Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Gladiator's Net (Hold Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Gladiator's Strike (Melee Damage Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Panacea (Healing Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
  • Shield Wall (Defense Buff Set) (Recipe Level Range 10-50)
• Players in a phased state can now affect other phased players. This means that players using Phase Shift, Dimension Shift, and other similar powers can attack each other. Players under the effect of Hibernate or Cage powers are not considered phased, and thus the change does not affect them.
• Elusivity in PvP has been decreased slightly, in order to ensure that it behaves properly in the presence of To-hit buffs and when compared to Resistance.

Other Changes

• The Taskforce Random Recipe Roll and Trial Random Recipe Roll from merit vendors have been merged into one Random Rare Recipe Roll pool. Also, the recipes generated by random rolls have been weighted so that recipes for common power types (such as Ranged Damage) drop more often than sets that are not so commonly used (such as Confuse). Finally, recipes formerly in Pool C and Pool D now have a small chance of dropping from a Boss class NPC.
• Active accounts will no longer have items placed on consignment deleted after 60 days of inactivity.
• The minimum speed of Hover and the Suppressed Speed of Flight, including the Kheldian versions, is now higher.
• Pet attack powers (the powers that the pets themselves use, not the summon powers) are no longer affected by recharge changes of any kind in order to fix AI power cycling issues. This means that enhancements, buffs such as Speed Boost, or slows will no longer affect pet attack powers.
• Slight fixes to powers across multiple archetypes.

See Also

• Issue 14 Badges

External Links

• Official Feature Update
• Preview: Issue 14: Architect
• Issue 13 Mission Architect Delay

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